Bidding freak hands.

The following three hands came up in the Edgar Kaplan regional:

1. ♠AKQJT86 ♥AQ52 ♦6 ♣T : What is your plan, and if you open 1♠ and get a 1NT response what now?
2. ♠AKJ9xxxxxx ♥K ♦AK ♣– : Does your system handle this big monster?
3. ♠– ♥K87x ♦Kx ♣QJ97xxx : You respond 1N to partner’s 1♠, and hear 3N.

Bidding distributional hands can be daunting as evidenced by the results from these three boards.

In case 1, why not jump-shift to 3H planning to follow 3♠ or 3N with 4♠, which describes this hand fairly well?  If you are lucky enough to catch a cuebid (in support of hearts) or a raise to 4♥ you can Blackwood.  At all 12 tables of the BAM, no slams were reached.

Partner’s hand: x Kxxx J8xx AJxx, 6♠ or ♥ cold on 3-2 hearts (which they were).

In case 2, what do you play 2♣-2♦-3♠ as?  I play it says ‘Spades are trump, cuebid Aces, or bid 3N if you have no Aces, but some Kings.’  (raise to 4♠ with nuthin’)  If you do so, and partner cuebids 4♣, you now can safely bid Blackwood and find out whether they also have the Ace of hearts as well, to decide between 7♠ and 7NT.  (ignoring the small chance that all three spades are in a single opponents hand).  If they don’t cuebid 4♣, you probably settle in 6 Spades.   It turned out partner held x AKJx xx AT9xxx, yet in the flight A-pairs, only 13 of 26 tables found 7NT, 4 found 7♠, and the remaining 9 bid only a small-slam!

Hand 3:  some people play that 1M-1N-3N is a running suit with tricks, and that 2N would have been forcing.  But in this case, since it is not, you have to assume that partner has either a balanced strong hand (which must include some Aces, since I have the red Kings, or a tricks hand in spades.  If the former, we may be cold for 6♣.  If the latter, 4N is probably still safe as I have some undisclosed strength.  As such, 4♣ is the proper continuation.  Opposite that call, this partner with AQxxx Ax Axx ATx should raise to 5♣.  Why five and not a cuebid.  Partner may just have a club bust better suited to 5♣, so we allow for that and thus don’t bid 6♣.   Normally a failure to cuebid would deny having one, but here, the 3N bidder must have some, and thus by inference, have ALL of them.  Making that inference, the 4♣ bidder can raise themselves to slam.  Of 26 tables in play, only 2 reached this slam.